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Attendees light candles for a moment of silence during the Unitarian Universalist Church of Muncie's vigil service honoring the victims of the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando.(Photo: Jordan Kartholl/The Star Press, Jordan Kartholl/The Star Press)Buy Photo

In a pair of local vigils for victims of the June 12 shootings at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, speakers offered prayers and messages of support but also notes of confusion and despair.

"Why can't we live in harmony?" Juan Carlos Venis of Muncie OUTreach asked during the Friday evening vigil at Muncie's Unitarian Universalist Church.

"I don't know why God would allow such a thing," Josh Holowell of Hope For Muncie said during Saturday's mid-day vigil at Muncie City Hall.

Armed with a handgun and a semi-automatic assault rifle, a man who reportedly pledged solidarity with a terrorist organization carried out an early-morning attack on patrons of the Orlando nightclub last weekend. The massacre, the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history, sparked not only calls for action from the political divide but vigils like those in Muncie, which sought to bring comfort and community to groups and individuals overwhelmed by the harm to their people and cultures

Richard McKinney, president of the Islamic Center of Muncie, told the crowd at the church that people of faith can't let "acts by criminals divide us."

"An attack on one or five or 50 or 500 of us is an attack on us all," Christie McCauley, past president of the Spectrum group at Ball State University, said.

Ryder Martz, one of the owners of the Mark III, a longtime club for the LGBT community that just reopened in downtown Muncie, called for unity.

"We grow stronger with every battle and every tear shed," Martz told the near-capacity crowd at the westside church.

The city hall vigil, attended by a dozen-and-a-half people, saw prayers and comments from speakers representing churches, the Islamic Center of Muncie and the city of Muncie's Human Rights Commission.

"You are loved," commission director Yvonne Thompson said. "You are welcome to the city of Muncie."

In the past year, city officials enacted local laws not only prohibiting discrimination against people of the Islamic faith and the LGBT community but also actively welcoming a diverse population.

"We welcome everyone," Thompson emphasized during Saturday's vigil.

Contact Keith Roysdon at 765-213-5828 and follow him on Facebook and Twitter.

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A community came together Sunday evening in front of the Mark III Tap Room in downtown Muncie to remember those killed in the shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Fla.
Corey Ohlenkamp/The Star Press